Teatro Della Terra Alienata: Intensive Farming (Image by Grandeza Studio)

Curators/Creative Directors:
University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building; Amaia Sanchez-Velasco (UTS Lecturer, Grandeza Studio), Jorge Valiente Oriol (UTS Lecturer, Grandeza Studio), Gonzalo Valiente (UTS Lecturer, Grandeza Studio), Miguel Rodriguez-Casellas (UTS Lecturer, Bajeza)

Commissioners:
University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, Prof. Elizabeth Mossop. Dean, UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building, Prof. Francesca Hughes. Head of School, UTS Architecture, Prof. Kate Sweetapple. Head of School, UTS Design
Art and Photography Director:
Shoufay Derz

Artists:
Cigdem Aydemir, Liam Benson, Madison Bycroft, Shoufay Derz, Janet Laurence and Patricia Reed.

Architectural Design Support (Principal Partner):
Susanne Pini, Inés Benavente Molina and Stefano Cottini (HDR).

Research Assistants:
Charles Curtin, Isaac Harrisson and Francesca Cappichioni.

Production Assistants:
George Shaw, Laura Touman, Joumana Elomar and Jordan Darin.

UTS Pedagogical exploration at the School of Architecture:
Factory of Hyper-ecologies (2017 & 2018): Francesca Capicchioni, David Cordato, Charles Curtin, Jesse Del Valle, Ben Feher, Miguel Luis Gilarte, Adam Hoh, Matthew Nicholson, Melinda Barbagallo, Callum Woo, Isaac Harrisson, Kevin Chen, Nathan Chan, Yvette Salmon, Stefanie Li, Kevin Chuang, Edwin Chin Fai Chon, Daniel Viglione, Nurul Farra Nadia Binti Zaed, Perry Cheang, Alice Pui Sze Ng, Roger Miranda, Tina Bao Ngoc Le, Nitika Duggal, Thi Thanh Mai Phan,Kate Harding, Rhys Collins under the supervision of Amaia Sánchez-Velasco (Grandeza Studio), Guillermo Fernández-Abascal (GFA2) and Shoufay Derz.

Factory of Hyper-ecologies selected projects by:
Francesca Capicchioni, Charles Curtin, Ben Feher, Miguel Luis Gilarte, Adam Hoh, Melinda Barbagallo, Nathan Chan, Yvette Salmon, Stefanie Li, Daniel Viglione, Nurul Farra Nadia Binti Zaed.

Scientific Advice:
Prof. David Booth. UTS School of Life Sciences, Associate Prof.David Suggett. UTS Climate Change Cluster.

Website Graphic Design:
Lily Hodgson and Owen Cramp (OCLH).

Australia
Teatro della Terra Alienata

March 1 – September 1 2019

Teatro Della Terra Alienata responds to the recent mass coral bleaching events that rendered visible the plausible death of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). The exhibition frames the decay of the GBR as a wicked problem that demands alternative political imaginaries and addresses the urgency raised by recent United Nations IPCC reports.

In 2018, the Australian government decided to partially outsource the preservation of the earth's largest living structure to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, a charity supported by major mining and insurance companies, banks, and airlines. The current preservation of the GBR is driven by technocratic strategies in which a technological apparatus monitors and manicures the “natural spectacle.” The exhibition portrays this technological arsenal as a theatre of distraction that conceals the biggest threats to the GBR’s survival: the global dependency on fossil fuels and unbridled growth, and the impacts of a local economy devoted to mining, fracking, and intensive agriculture.

Inspired by the Xenofeminist Manifesto, the Teatro proposes the reappropriation and resignification of preexisting technologies and infrastructures of natural preservation and mineral extraction. It stages a fictional territorial alienation of the GBR and its catchment areas from the domain of extractivist capitalism, and imagines its reterritorialization through an economic rationality centered on the notion of joy.